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Nov 4, 2016

The Five Boy Wonders of Batman Comics

If you think Superboy has a confusing pedigree, wait until you hear about Robin, Batman's teen sidekick.  There have been five, not including one-shots, fantasies, clones, and Infinite Earths versions.


1. Dick Grayson

In Detective Comics 38 (1940), Batman takes in eight-year old Dick Grayson, a circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by crooks, and grooms him to become his sidekick, Robin the Boy Wonder (not named after the bird, but after Robin Hood).  Comic sales doubled, as Robin mediated the grim harshness of the Caped Crusader and gave the kids someone to identify with, and soon every superhero in the business had a young boy tagging along.

Robin soon became a teenager, and fought crooks alongside Batman.  During the 1960s he founded a superhero coalition, the Teen Titans, who listened to rock music and said "groovy" a lot.



In the 1980s, all grown up, Dick Grayson decided to set off on his own as the superhero Nightwing.  Thereafter he and Batman occasionally worked together, and in at least one storyline, he returned temporarily to his Robin persona.















2. Jason Todd

After Dick Grayson moved on, Batman needed a new sidekick.  He chose Jason Todd, a troubled kid who he had been mentoring since 1983. Unfortunately, fans never took to the new Robin; after a reader poll in 1988 called for him to be dropped, the writers obligingly had him murdered by the Joker.  He later was resurrected as the superhero Red Wing.













3. Tim Drake

Never at a loss when it came to finding young boys to mentor, in 1989 Batman brought in Tim Drake, who had been a fan of the original Dynamic Duo.  But this Robin was not satisfied with merely hanging out with an old guy; he formed his own teen superhero coalitions, Young Justice and then the new Teen Titans full of millennials.

You may have noticed that all of the Robins look pretty much alike.  Batman definitely has a type.

In 2011, Tim Drake left Batman to become the superhero Red Robin, and retconned his past to insist that he had never been just plain Robin.






4. Stephanie Brown

A Girl Wonder?

Yep, Tim Drake's girlfriend (not shown) took up the mantle of Robin briefly. Then she became the Spoiler, then Batgirl.  Then she was retconned to have never been any of them.








5. Damien Wayne

The next Robin was Batman's son, raised by the murderous League of Assassins, and thus quite a handful when he came to live with Dad.  Eventually he settled down to fight crime as Robin, then Red Bird, before being murdered.  Or, in an alternate reality, becoming the new Batman.

But the thing about being a twink magnet is, there's a new crop every year.  A few hours of cruising at Gotham City Junior College, and Batman will be soon be taking the next Boy Wonder by the...um...hand.

3 comments:

  1. "Grayson" was given his own comic series in which he is some sort of James Bond type- beautifully drawn and often shirtless

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    Replies
    1. I do loathe that series. Extreme heterosexism, gay people as a joke, constant sexual harassment, breaking up existing gay couples for jokes about Dick's butt, but *makes jerkoff sign* it's so progressive.

      But you really don't have to go that far. The premise is that fame and martyrdom make for a good secret identity. The tagline, "you don't know Dick", is great for the Court of Owls, where actual secrets about Dick's past, such as being marked for training as an assassin, are revealed. And, no, Dick and the Midnighter are not "one of the classic frenemy relationships" of the DCU. Deathstroke has existed longer than the Midnighter's original creator, Image Comics. Dick and the Midnighter have only been in the same universe since 2011. You keep using that word. (When it comes to Dick Grayson, I think DC passes around the coke.)

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  2. Red Hood. Red Wing was a rookie heroine from an alternate future where Donna Troy gives birth to an evil god. Part of a team that no one likes because Mirage rapes Nightwing, future Nightwing, under Raven's influence, rapes Mirage and calls himself Deathwing, and Killowat's a racist.

    Zero Hour hits, alternate timelines are destroyed, five of the Teamers are erased, and we learn that menace of the Legion at the end of time, the Time Trapper, is really Cosmic Boy. He then reveals that they were sleeper agents for the Monarch (who was manipulated by Hal Jordan to replace this reality with one where bad things never happen and bring back Coast City). Monarch's activities so threatened time itself that the Time Trapper had to intervene, finding three sleeper agents from the early 1990s and making them Nightwing, Mirage, and Terra (who is of course not that one), overwriting their memories.

    I actually liked Red Wing

    By the way, Jason HATES Tim. Damian does too. Jason considers Tim a usurper. (He also hates Bruce for leaving the Joker alive. It's actually worse: At one point Dick killed the Joker, after he brought up Jason, and Bruce brought him back. Maybe I should ship Batjokes?)

    Stephanie's time as a Robin is a bit of a joke. Basically it was to bring Tim back after his father said he couldn't be Robin. She stayed in as Spoiler afterward until she caused War Games. She died in that, but then it was retconned their medic killed her to make a point about how this work isn't for children. (Did Jericho possess her too?) Then it was retconned again that she was chilling in Africa this whole time. (So what's with Cass's ghost dream? Oh, most fans prefer Steph with Cassandra Cain and Tim with Superboy. Gay options, ahoy!)

    Damian, in the old timeline, everyone but Dick hated Damian. Yes, even Bruce. (Considering he was drugged at the time of Damian's conception...)

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